


trying to believe

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: s03e10 Maveth, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma, later.</p><p>[An immediate reaction to the midseason finale. <b>Spoilers</b> contained within!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	trying to believe

**Author's Note:**

> Just my immediate, less-than-an-hour-later reaction to _Maveth_. As such, there are SPOILERS below. Please don't read if you haven't seen the midseason finale yet!
> 
> I am still behind on comments, because I am still the worst.
> 
> Title is from The Letter Black's _My Disease_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

The Inhuman keeps pieces of the people it wears.

Oh, not literally, of course. There are no eyes or hands in jars, no creepy collection of stuffed corpses. But somehow, someway, the people the Inhuman occupies—the empty shells he takes over—leave an imprint on him.

Jemma knows it as soon as she sees him.

The face is Ward’s, as is the body. But there’s something—some _one_ —else in the curve of his smile when their eyes meet for the first time.

“Jemma,” he says, and just like the smile, the warm affection in his voice is all Will’s.

Her heart doesn’t crack, because it cracked months ago, when she looked into the empty containment module and knew, _knew_ , that Will was dead. Not left behind, not lost—dead.

He’s been dead since the moment she left the planet, if not slightly before. He died saving her, Fitz said, and that’s straight from the Inhuman’s mouth.

The Inhuman’s mouth which is shaped like Ward’s but speaks Will’s tone.

“Nothing to say?” he asks, smile gentling. “That’s new.”

Her cracked heart shatters.

“You sound like him.” Somehow, she’s standing scant inches from him, though she doesn’t remember moving. The guards who carried her in here aren’t holding her back any longer. They might have left, or they might simply be standing behind her. She can’t drag her eyes away from the Inhuman’s to check. “And you—you—”

There’s something of Will about his eyes, too—and the warmth of his face, when she cups it in her hands.

…Though that’s absurd, isn’t it? Everyone’s skin is warm. That wasn’t unique to Will, not really.

(It felt like it, though, in the days when they were the only two people on the planet—in the universe. He was the only warmth, the only _comfort_ , in all of nature.)

Ward’s mouth twists into a smirk—smugly knowing, so very like the way he looked at her in that tent. It’s a smirk that speaks of understanding she wishes—wished—he didn’t have, that tells her he can see through to the truth hidden beneath her thickest skin.

Her heart wants what it wants; it always has. No amount of wrongdoing, no amount of intent, can change its course.

Her feelings for Ward persisted long past the point of reason. Her feelings for Will flourished in the worst sort of environment, despite her best efforts to quell them. Even her feelings for Fitz have stubbornly refused to change, no matter how often she sets her mind to fixing them.

“I brought a little of him back for you,” the Inhuman murmurs. His hands—Ward’s broad palms—circle her waist, calloused fingers slipping up under her shirt. There’s something of Will’s reverence in the pressure he exerts to close the last of the distance between them. “Would you like it?”

“No,” she says, and then, “Yes. I don’t—”

He’s not Will. He’s not even _Ward_. He’s _It_ , Death, the monster that haunts her nightmares.

He _killed Will_. Will _died_ saving her from him.

But there’s something—just a little something—of Will about him. Something more than the one picture she has, than the persistent hollow in the pit of her stomach and the unending yearning that winds through her dreams.

“You sure?” the Inhuman asks.

Warmth blooms under her skin. If she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend—

“Yes,” she breathes.

The press of his lips against hers is just like Will’s.


End file.
